LINUX is slowly gaining an upper hand in the Operating System market. But newbies do not want to straightaway install this "so called OS for nerds" (bull**it - LINUX has become much user friendly for beginners). They might want to try it out before installing it on their system. Also some LINUX users may want to try other LINUX distros before moving to any other LINUX distro
This tutorial aims at such people who wants to try any LINUX distro before installing it on their machine.

Possibilities :

Boot from Live DVD

Boot from Live USB Stick

Boot from ISO

Trying it out from Virtual Machine

1. Boot from Live DVD :

This can be done by burning the ISO image of the LINUX distro you have downloaded to a DVD and booting from the Live DVD.
For burning the ISO file , you can use softwares like Nero, Power ISO, Ashampoo Burning Studio, etc.. under Windows
For burning the ISO under LINUX, you can use K3B, Brasero Disc Burner, etc

2. Boot from Live USB Stick :

This is the most popular option that everyone stick with. With this, you can even make your Live LINUX persistent (i.e. You can save files in them).
For this you need the LINUX distro ISO and software like Universal USB Installer, LiLi Boot ( for Windows) and UNetBootin ( for both Windows and LINUX)
Then open the software and select your distro as well as the USB drive from which you want to boot the GNU/LINUX distro.

3. Boot from ISO :

4. VirtualBox :

This method is obviously the first thing that pops out in anyone's mind who want to try out any new distro (Not just GNU/LINUX). There is no need to restart the PC unlike other methods. This is also the least time consuming process.

Saving the bandwidth :

Problem :

Suppose that you have a limited bandwidth internet connection. You want to download some videos with youtube-dl , and only as moderate quality videos. Will you enter the options every time you paste a youtube link to download the video ? Sometimes you might forget to do so, and the youtube-dl might start downloading a HD quality video. Boom... Bandwidth loss for you.

Solution :

Set the default option to download the video in a particular quality or restrict the maximum size of the video file that can be downloaded

Prevent the video from getting corrupted accidentally :

Problem :

You start downloading a video and suddenly want to download the video in another format. You cancel the download and start the download. Unfortunately, if the new video is saved under the same file name, youtube-dl considers it as the same video being resumed and downloads from where the last video was stopped downloading. Result - Corrupted Video

Solution :

Set the saved video's file name to be VIDEO TITLE - VIDEO ID - FORMAT.EXTENSION . This could have saved my bandwidth and my time too. was out of luck

Prefer a Video/Audio Format/Quality Everytime :

Problem :

You may want to download the video/audio in a specific format/quality. But specifying them everytime will be a tiresome work.

Solution :

Set your preferred video/audio format so that you do not have to enter it everytime

Setting the default options for youtube-dl :

You can set the default options for youtube-dl in two ways: Graphical way or the nerdy command line way

Graphical way :

Open the file manager.

Open the .config directory in your home folder (If this is not visible, use Ctrl + H to make it visible)

Open the file named youtube-dl.conf. If it does not exist, create one.

Then enter the options that youtube-dl should take as default while downloading the videos.

Save the file.

Command Line :

Open Terminal and enter the following :

cd ~/.config/
vi youtube-dl.conf

Then enter the default options for the youtube-dl and then save the file

From the next time when you download the youtube videos using youtube-dl, the default options will take effect.

Download Videos without default settings :

Just as much you want to download using the default settings, you might also want to skip the default settings for some videos.

For you to download the video in the way you like, just add --ignore-config flag to the youtube-dl.

If you just want to prevent a specific flag from taking effect, then you can also pass that flag with the value you want

Lets say, you have set the default video format to 18 (mp4 - 640x360), but you want to download a video in 720p webm format , you can pass the flag -f 247 .Stay tuned with us for more updates. See the right pane for our social networking pages

I have always mounted the NTFS and FAT partitions in GNU/LINUX, but never the other way around - mounting EXT partitions in Windows. Searching for the solution, I stumbled upon Ext2Fsd, a project that aims at mounting the Ext partitions in Windows.

Installing Ext2Fsd :

While installing, it will ask for an option to whether provide the support for writing data to Ext partitions. If you wish to enable write access to your EXT partition, then you can enable the options ( Even if this option is not selected, I was still able to write to the partitions, so i am not sure what these options are for)

After installation has finished, open Ext2 Volume Manager - this will be used to manage mounting the Ext partitions

Mounting EXT Partitions :

Then select the Ext partition that you wish to mount in Windows. As a note, the Ext4 partitions are listed as Ext3 in the Ext2 Volume Manager, but no problems in mounting them.

Ext2 Volume Manager

Right click the partition and select 'Ext2 Management'

A box will pop up presenting you with the options to mount the Ext partition

Mounting options

If you want to only mount the partition with any drive letter, you can use the first option 'Automatically mount via Ext2Mgr'

If you want to mount the partition with specific drive letter every time, you can use the second option 'Mountpoint for fixed disk, need reboot'

Micromax
has become quite a popular manufacturer in the past few years and the
android operating system has been of great help. They launched
various android devices that were powerful and offered excellent
value for money. Now they are going beyond android and are making a move
towards windows phone. They recently launched two new windows phone
devices and they seem to be quite impressive. The smartphones are Canvas Win W121 and Canvas Win W092. The Win W092 is priced
lower though the price of Win W121 is quite affordable as well. We
take a look at some of the features of the Canvas Win W121.

Micromax Canvas Win W121

Impressive
build quality

Micromax
has really work on the quality of their devices in these years and
this one doesn’t look or feel like a budget smartphone. It has got
a slim profile with rounded corners that look nice. It features a
metal frame which gives it a nice feel. The device is large with 5
inch display but it has been designed well so handling is not an
issue here. You can easily hold and use the device using one hand
only.

The
device is light and the weight distribution is proper. This came as a
relief as many earlier Micromax devices have been heavy in the upper
half making them tough to handle. The back of this device feels
premium as well due to the leather finish. There is no Micromax
branding on the front face of the device and they have kept it to a
minimum on the rear as well. The front has got three capacitive keys
below the display and they haven’t gone for the virtual buttons
like on Lumia 630. The volume button sits on left and power key on
right of the device. There is no dedicated camera key.

HD
display

The
canvas Win W121 comes with an impressive HD display. It measures 5
inches and has a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. This gives you a
pixel density of 294 pixels per inch. While this might not be a very
impressive number for a mid-range device, for a budget device, it is.
The display has got superb viewing angles and due to the high pixel
density, it looks very crisp. The fonts look very clear and even the
small texts are easily readable. The display does justice to the
colourful interface of the windows phone. The contrast ratios are
good so the blacks of windows phone look quite good as well. The
colours are well saturated though they look a bit unnatural at times.

Side View

Decent
hardware

We
wanted to write powerful hardware here but suddenly we realised that
they sell octa core devices for just a few thousands more. The
hardware isn’t very powerful but it isn’t a slouch either. The
Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset runs a quad core processor clocked at
1.2 GHz. It gets the Adreno 302 GPU and has got 1 GB of RAM. It comes
with 8 GB of internal storage and supports micro SD cards up to 32
GB. The hardware is pretty good to ensure smooth operation.

The
Lumia 630 which is available at a slightly higher price tag is the
closest rival for this device. It features a better chipset and GPU
but gets half the amount of RAM. This limits the number of apps you
can run on your device. With the Micromax
Canvas Win W121, you won’t have to worry. You can run almost
all the apps available on windows app store.

The
device offers most of the connectivity options you would need. It
supports 3G networks with speeds up to 21 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
and micro USB 2.0. The device comes with support for dual SIM. That
is a rare feature on windows devices and saves you the trouble of
carrying multiple devices. You can have two sets of messaging and
call apps for each SIM card. This would give you individual call
logs, messages and speed dials. In case you find this too
complicated, you can switch to a unified system as well. You get the
usual list of sensors like proximity sensor, gravity sensor, light
sensor and accelerometer.

Camera

Budget
devices rarely come with good cameras. Well this isn’t exactly the
case here. This device has got a pretty decent 8 megapixel camera.
The camera quality is quite good even when shooting indoors. The
photos don’t turn grainy until the light goes very low. Outdoor
shots are quite impressive and the colours are replicated well. You
don’t find a flash or front camera on low end Nokia Lumia devices
but here they have provided a LED flash and a 2 megapixel front
camera. The front camera is not very impressive and the images you
click are grainy.

8 MP Camera and LED Flash

Fresh
Operating System

There
are hardly any devices in the market right now that run the Windows
Phone 8.1. This makes it quite an early player on this platform.
While the operating system is very much similar to what we saw on the
Lumia 630, you can’t have the Nokia Apps here. Thankfully they have
decided not to add any of their domestic apps. You get Office 365
access on the device. For web browsing, you are short of options and
would have to live with the Internet Explorer. Not that it is bad but
we are so used to Chrome and Opera Mini that if feels a bit weird.

One
thing that we surely missed here is the ‘Here Maps’. It is a
Nokia app so you won’t be able to get it on this device. Nokia has
got some other nice apps as well like the lenses. The app support is
limited but you aren’t left out without the popular apps. Even the
Instagram is here now after a long waiting. The experience of most of
the apps is very different from their android counterparts and new
users might take a while getting used to them.

About the author

The article has been written by Kundan Srivastava, who is passionate about technology. He's working at 91mobiles.com and writes about the latest in the tech domain, right from devices to innovations.

Stay tuned for more updates on gadgets, tips and tricks. See the right side pane for links to our social networking pages.

Creating a system user in GNU/LINUX is a very easy task and now we are gonna see how to do it.

What is a System User ?

A System User is a user account that has no home directory or login options. So basically if you create a system user, it cannot be used to login into the system

See the video below for demonstration on what a system user is :

Why is it needed ?

System Users are generally created by softwares for their own needs. But in some cases, if you install a software, you may need to create different users for different purposes.

For example, when I installed IBM DB2, it asked me for different usernames for different purposes. But those usernames must be unique. So will you go creating a normal user (with a home directory and present at login) for that ? If you do so, you will have unwanted login users and home directories. The same goes for when the softwares create their own users.

In such cases all you need to do is create a system user.

How to create a system user ?

A system user can be created using the following command :

sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --disabled-login username

Now you can use this system user for samba sharing ,etc...

Stay tuned for more information. See the right side for links to our social networking pages.

I have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on my system and the default bittorrent client that comes with it is Transmission Bittorrent client. I also have deluge installed in my system and am using it as the default client for torrent files (its my favo). But whenever i click on the magnetic links from google chrome, it only opens the Transmission Bittorrent client and not deluge.

This is because Google Chrome relies on a program called xdg-open to open these links.

What is xdg-open ?

Xdg-open is a tool for configuring the default applications for a user. So it opens a file / link with the user's preferred application. Google Chrome uses this Xdg-open to open the application for magnetic link. By default, you wouldn't have set any preferred application for the magnetic link, and so, the default bittorrent client is opened everytime you click on the magnetic link.

So how do i change it ?

Well, to open the magnetic link with deluge, you will have to do the following :

Open Terminal and type the following :

xdg-mime default deluge.desktop x-scheme-handler/magnet

Note: I have chosen to use Deluge as the default handler for the magnetic link types. However, you can use the desktop file of your favourite bittorrent client to open the magnetic links. You can find the desktop files under /usr/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications

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